The debut novelist who won the £30,000 Orange Prize hopes her victory with a modern version of an Ancient Greek epic will help to show it is never too early to start reading the Classics.

Echoing Mayor Boris Johnson, who supports the study of Latin and Greek, Madeline Miller revealed how she was inspired to write The Song Of Achilles by her mother, who read Homer’s Iliad to her when she was five years old.

The American academic, 33, became the final winner of the award for women’s fiction under sponsorship from Orange — although past winner Andrea Levy and judges Bettany Hughes, Sandi Toksvig and Joanna Trollope all insisted that the prize must continue.

Miller, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, spent the past decade writing her novel and said she would be thrilled if her win inspired people to read the original.

Wearing an orange dress loaned by rival Ann Patchett, who could not be there, Miller said the Classics had lasted so long because they dealt with human experience.

“That’s what gripped me when I was younger and they meant so much to me,” she said. “My mother read me The Iliad when I was five, though she edited out the gory parts.”

She also hopes the story of the love affair between Achilles and Patroclus will help to combat homophobia.

Levy, the biggest-selling Orange Prize winner in its 17-year history with Small Island, said the award must go on, adding: “It has raised the profile of women writers. It was a life-changing event for me to win.”

Comedian Toksvig said more male writers were publicised, insisting: “As long as that imbalance continues, we must advertise the fact that women write some of the best fiction around.”

Historian Hughes called the prize “a glittering success” and Trollope said: “The book trade would be heartbroken if we stop and so would our readers.”

Ex-Booker winner Howard Jacobson said he was in favour of all prizes after seeing how victory boosted sales of his novel The Finkler Question.